Every once in a while - like every 2-3 weeks - it just dies. Dead. Can't
telnet to it, can't ping it, it's not taking calls, nothing. The power is
still on, and if you look at the little lights on the back it looks ok.
Nothing short of turning off and on at the power switch revives it. Then
it comes up clean and runs for a few more weeks like nothing is wrong.
The other PM3s I have have never done this, but this one has done this
since I got it, and through a few Com OS upgrades.
Really, it's not a huge problem *yet*, I know when it goes down, because
that's the box I use for access, so if I'm off line and my little P.O.S.
ACC Congo is telling me it's got busy signals, I dial in with my trusty,
dusty 33.6 to the regular modem pool and try to ping the PM3. If it
doesn't answer, I call the office (about 20 miles north of my home) and
have one of the tech guys go in the server room and reboot it for me. Or
I'm there and I do it myself. No biggie. Last night was the worst one,
it was down for 8 hours before I noticed, so I hopped in my car and took
the drive to reboot it at 7 am on a Saturday, as the tech support guys
don't get in 'til 9 on Saturdays.
The reason this is about to become an issue is this: my office is in
Bellevue, WA. We are opening a new point of presence in Portland, OR.
It's in a co-location closet hosted by ELI, and I won't have anyone there
that can simply walk in and reboot a misbehaving Portmaster. I'll have to
make the 150 mile drive myself to do it. Icky.
So here's my quandry: Anyone know why it's doing this, and/or what I can
do to prevent it? Current ideas are limited - like telnet to it and
reboot it once a week, or set up a cron job on one of my servers to do it
at 1 a.m. on Sunday mornings or something. I don't know if this will
prevent it for sure, as I rebooted that box early last week when I moved
it in the server closet.
I read somewhere that I could plug a modem into the console port. I've
never tried it, and I don't know if it would answer when it gets like
this. I'd be happy to give it a shot, but I don't know how to force the
box to freeze up so I can test it before it 150 miles away.
Any suggestions?
------------------------------------
Timothy A. Gregory
Northwest Link Systems Administrator
Arabic > English Translator
------------------------------------
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